It is estimated that there are more than 60 million outdoor lights in the United States autonomously controlled by conventional photo-controls. These outdoor lights, when properly working, simply react to ambient light conditions, for example, to turn-on at dusk and turn-off at dawn. This method of operating outdoor lights results in many lights being on when they are not needed, and it significantly increases outdoor lighting system operating costs.
The use of conventional photo-controls to control outdoor lights (luminaires) also leads to maintenance and repair issues. There are significant costs associated with hiring qualified maintenance personnel and buying equipment such as, for example, special maintenance vehicles required to access light fixtures for replacing lamps and servicing electrical components. To discover faulty fixture operations, light system owners and operators must resort to sending maintenance personnel to do “drive-by” visual examination of all units, which often number in the thousands or wait for a customer to report a malfunction. This drive-by must be done at night to detect non-functioning fixtures. These high costs limit how many lights can be repaired or serviced on any given day and force many light system operators to maintain their outdoor lights on an as needed basis (i.e., only when they are notified of an inoperable light). Understandably, this maintenance methodology is highly inefficient because it ties up resources as crews and equipment randomly travel to failed, geographically dispersed outdoor lights.